Tips on how to boost your employment (Preferably for Students)

Recalling the time when I was writing a résumé for my internship, I had to research a lot on how employers read résumés. Considerably as a student leader, I interviewed a lot of applicants on who to want to be part of our team. From that moment on, I somewhat felt a recruiter instinct on how to choose the right people for the team. I’ve been also seeing résumés by other people and i’ve notice the differences on which one is elegant to the eye and not. I’ve also learned from my bosses the things they consider for their company, so i’ve decided to pin point the things that i’ve learned and experience from applying jobs both from the point of view of the recruiter and the applicant. It’s just 2 months left till my graduation so I might as well make an archive, as well as for future references. If your a student, this article is especially made for you. If you think you lack some trainings, seminars or some credible assets and you have a short-time left to finish your credentials, I hope I can boost your confidence and have more thoughts on what to put in to your portfolio. Then again, I am just sharing my thoughts, experiences and realizations so this might vary especially recruiters have their own point of view in selecting their applicants.

1.) Place only the most relevant and up-to-date information

I know this is a bit given but, people sometimes don’t realize that what their placing as actually irrelevant. From what i’ve learn, you shouldn’t place your high school achievements. Some still place that they’re still a chess club champion when in fact it’s been a lot year’s past since that happened. It’s practically similar in an organization in your university, wherein you place in your résumé that your a member of a mountain climbing group but never it is relevant to the job that your applying for. Sure, we appreciate that you can climb 10 mountains a day but are you gonna climb mountains when you work? Also, if your working in the industry for more than 5 years, you would have probably been through a lot of positions. Just make sure to place only the most recent ones because having a single page résumé with a relevant experience is better than a long one.

2.)Elaborate all of your projects and the activities done on your co-curricular activities

This is actually one of the most common missed out things that I see on a student’s résumé. Let’s take into account that you have been a head of the design team in your organization and you have done a lot of projects within your term. Placing in plainly in your resume would feel that it has no impact to your employer. Try adding some weight in it like specifying some of the projects that you have published because employers are not like fortune tellers that they have to guess what in particular is the position that you have. Normally, the format would go like this:

From that point, it would be fulfilling for the employer to see that you have done so much with your term. There are times that your organization would have an acronym. Might as well have a complete abbreviation of it beside the acronym. Then again, they do not guess what do those acronym’s mean. Try to be specific.

3.)Write first the most credible achievements

Some employers have their own sight of attraction and its always in the first page. Other than your personal information and education, try to maximize the most credible achievements you have in the first page because it is where employers would usually have their first impression and you wouldn’t want to ruin the opportunity to impress him/her. Also, try to arrange it chronologically and off course the latest goes first.

4.)Have your own personal masterpiece other than your thesis

This can be a great output to showcase to your employer. Things like this can be your own personal portfolio website containing your interest and projects you have done and possibly a blog. Another good thing would be having your own speaker deck account if ever your involved with public speaking. Well, whatever showcases your strengths and interests, try to make something out of it.

5.)Create your own online professional account

Last but not least would be this. Sometimes, your resume is not enough to tell all of your achievements. A good social professional network would be Linkedin. In Linkedin, you get to elaborate in detail all of the things that you have done throughout your professionalism. It also has a feature to recommend and up-vote on your skills. In my experience on the time I created a Linkedin account, 3 recruiters automatically added me up. You see how big the impact is? Another online site to showcase your skills would be stackoverflow and github(For technology field). On stackoverflow, the more reputation you have shows that you have contributed a lot to the community. This shows the mastery of your field on answering peoples questions. Github on the other hand is a repository wherein it keeps your projects with a version control feature. If your repository is kept on public, its a good way to show your projects and how well you code. At least it proves worth more than your résumé.

Well I guess that’s about it. Goodluck on your job hunt and I hope I have given you a little bit of guidance.